TIMELY SALES FOR RESALES



Resale pace quickens
By Kathy McCormick,
Calgary Herald
August 22, 2009

Patience is a virtue, an adage that especially holds true if you are trying to sell your home.

Or it could also be a simple truth: If it's priced right, it will sell.

Take a look at the mid-year resale statistics by the Calgary Real Estate Board on the city's different neighbourhoods.

The board's zone A, which is generally communities in the northwest, had one home sell in just three days, defying naysayers hyping the market slowdown.

That neighbourhood was Charleswood, which only posted that one sale for the month of July.

From April 1 to the end of June, the shortest average number of days for homes on the market throughout the city was in the community of Scarboro in the board's zone C. Two homes sold at an average of just eight days, with an average price of $1.35 million.

Some properties are selling as quickly as seven to 10 days after listing, says Len Wong of Re/Max House of Realty. "That's a big, big change from the beginning of the year, when it was more like 50 days."

Homes under $450,000 are the hottest sellers, he says. "The core of sales has been stimulated by the lower end."

On the other hand, the longest average wait for a community to sell a home was just over eight months for a house in Connaught, also in Zone C. It sold for $605,000.

Overall, activity picked up in the city with Zone A posting the most sales for the second quarter--1,772 homes sold for an average price of $443,134 (median price of $410,000, which is the middle price of all homes sold.)

Zone C had the highest average sale price at $522,647 for its 1,337 sales. It also posted the highest median price at $440,000.Nine communities had average sale prices topping $1 million, with eight of the nine communities in Zone C.

The highest average home price was $1,636,571 for the 14 homes that sold in Mount Royal during that time period. Mount Royal's median price, however, was just over $1 million.

Scarboro, with two sales averaging $1.4 million, had the highest median price at $1.35 million, followed by The Slopes with two sales averaging $1,472,888 and $1,225,000 median. "Anecdotally, I've actually heard of a couple of multiple offers for homes priced over $1 million," says Bonnie Wegerich, president of the Calgary Real Estate Board.

At the other end, the most affordable homes sold in the city during the three-month period were in West Dover in Zone B, where the five homes that sold averaged just $199,400--the only average prices below$200,000 in Calgary during the second quarter. The median price was $197,000. The busiest neighbourhood for home sales was Coventry Hills in Zone A, where 141 homes changed hands at an average price of $342,429 and a median price of $336,000.